***

"Five of ‘em," Theurgist said. "We actually should be able to handle them one each, too…"

"They look different," Knuckles noted. "Look new."

"Maybe they wanted to go with the She-Hulk look?" Plastique asked, an innocent smile on his face.

"Shut up, Alan," Jackson said. "Let’s just take them…"

"Reckon you can, moron?" This last from Erica, from Springboard.

"Yes, well done," Theurgist said. "We’ve all said our piece now… So hit them."

"Yeah, but… Aren’t they supposed to try and shoot us?"

That stopped the rest of the team in their tracks. Jackson, rather than fire off his light blast, closed his mouth and turned back to look at Plastique, trying to make sense of the question. More accurately, trying to make sense of the problems the question raised.

"…Yeah," was the best Theurgist could come up with, as the green-and-purple Sentinels continued to advance down the street toward them. "Good point. Right. Umm… Suggestions, anyone?"

"Hit ‘em," Knuckles said. "Hit ‘em before they remember how their blasters work."

"Works for me," Jackson commented.

"It would," Erica shot back.

"None of that." Jack Marlowe, the Theurgist and Clan X’s leader snapped the comment out almost irritably. "They’re robots. They don’t forget how things work. Not things built into them, anyway. So Alan asked the right question. What’s with the new paint job, and what’s with the lack of them already having shot us?"

"Maybe they’re a new close-combat model," Jackson suggested.

"Tell you what, Jackson," Marlowe said, "If you can tell me why in hell Gyrich and Hodge would design a Sentinel that has – absolutely has – to get in close enough that the mutants with physical-contact powers can attack as well as mutants like you, rather than the ones that just get pummelled by accident, I’ll buy that."

"To look better on the news reports?" Plastique again.

For the second time in less than a minute, Marlowe looked at the young mutant and wondered whether his utterances were due to perspicacity or just his usual joking around. He wished he knew, wished he could just tell him to shut up as he usually did – but he couldn’t. It was too possible an idea. Dynamic hand-to-hand struggles were better TV. They’d slot in nicely next to the latest Avengers foray…

And then the Sentinels were on them.

Marlowe looked back, saw the green robotic hand reaching for him, yelled "Scatter!" and ducked out of it’s way, it’s fingers closing through his hair rather than his skull.

And yet… a tingle ran through him as it happened, and he wondered as he turned away what that was due to. Were their casings electrified, these green Sentinels? Could their human controllers risk that, with the amount of Sentinels that ended up damaged and left on the streets, streets shared between humans and mutants?

And if Marlowe was right, and even they weren’t stupid and bloody-minded enough to risk that, then what had the tingle been?

Ducking past his attacker and turning to face it, he let the magic flow through him. One of his best gambits against these things had always been sticking their feet to the floor, or, more accurately, melding their boots with whatever they stood on. Then you simply moved around too far for their arm to reach and watched them do themselves internal damage as they tried to swivel, and moved in on a suddenly damaged Sentinel.

So he repeated the manoeuvre once more, blending concrete and armour plating…

And the Sentinel gestured toward the bonding… and paused… and the meld vanished. The Sentinel was once more free.

Marlowe felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. Magic Sentinels? Was this the latest thing?

It gestured again, and Marlowe hurriedly dispelled it’s attempt to separate his flesh from his bone. Deflecting this spell, he moved on to an offensive, aiming to make the electrons in the thing’s silicon brain start to flow the wrong way. The Sentinel countered the spell, but Marlowe kept his offensive up. And started chanting.

Marlowe had a natural affinity for magic; that was his mutant ability. The snag was that it was all instinctive, which meant sometimes it didn’t work. It also meant that all the chanting, the preparation and meditation of other mages – it wasn’t part of his way. Except for one spell…

One chant, Marlowe knew. And that chant was simply a booster, a means of bolstering the power of another spell. It was this mantra he chanted now, chanted over and over as he poured magical energy into the Sentinel. Gradually, the power built, the force became stronger than the magical energies wielded in opposition by the Sentinel… and the machine shut down as the electricity within no longer ran as it should. Marlowe smiled and stepped back, assessed his work, and turned to see how his team-mates were doing against their own opponents. Against mage robots, after all, they might find themselves in serious difficulty…

But the other Sentinels didn’t seem to be using magic. Marlowe wondered what was going on, then, if some new magic-technology hybrid wasn’t the explanation…

Try as he might, he couldn’t find the answer. Not yet. So he simply stood and watched…

Erica was having a bad time of it. She was agile and fast to a ridiculous degree, and usually she could run rings round a Sentinel as long as she remembered not to move in predictable patterns and run straight into a blast predicted on the basis of her course. Theurgist had seen her do it time and again, either on the offensive herself, or stalling for time to allow Knuckles to recover, or luring the robots into the path of Jackson’s light blast… countless times, really. The point was, compared to the humanoid Sentinels, she was fast. She danced around them, ducked their energy blasts, then slipped in under their guard and struck.

But this time, the Sentinel went with her, matching her every move, maintaining pace with her. Every sudden twist and turn, every unexpected backflip to avoid an impact… The Sentinel duplicated it almost as soon as she made it; as soon as the information reached it’s mind. At the same time, it moved in closer.

Theurgist wondered if there was anything he could do to help, but as he summoned up the power within him, an explosion nearby made him turn his head.

This wasn’t one of Plastique’s self-immolating blasts, this was what you got when Jackson released a light blast to a Sentinel’s neck from a distance of under two feet. The impact was pretty spectacular, as always, but it distracted Marlowe heavily.

"Incoming!" Jackson yelled, hand waving back up the street where the Sentinels had originally emerged. Marlowe looked over his shoulder, following the pointing hand, and saw another five of the green and purple Sentinels approaching.

"Oh, great… They’re coming at us in waves, people!… Jackson, get on the new guys. We’ll mop up here. And guys, be aware; I think they can do magic."

"Magic?" Plastique asked, a puzzled expression on his face. "Haven’t seen anything like your stuff, boss. Haven’t actually seen this guy do much, actually… But then, he hasn’t managed to lay a finger on me yet."

As Jackson moved forward to intercept the second wave of Sentinels, Marlowe’s head swivelled again as a giant KERRACK filled the air. He saw Knuckles and a Sentinel disappear through a newly made hole in the wall, locked in a fierce grapple. They tumbled behind the remaining brickwork and vanished from sight.

So much for worrying about Knuckles, Marlowe thought; there was no point even trying to watch out for him when he got into this sort of wrestling match. You just had to pray he was the one still moving at the end of it all.

Sometimes Knuckles could be an idiot…

Marlowe’s eyes finally found time to return to Springboard. What he saw wasn’t good.

She was lying unconscious on the tarmac. The Sentinel that had done that was nowhere to be seen…

Something seemed to explode in the back of his head, and Jack Marlowe fell forward, dead to the world.

Alan Smith – Plastique – saw all this as he dodged the Sentinel assigned to attack him, and wondered at how much faster the Sentinel that had attacked Springboard was than the one attacking him. He knew he couldn’t stay ahead of something that moved with Erica’s speed, and that thing did - but he was staying ahead of this other one, so… And Jack had said that they might use magic, and Jack was a magic-user himself. That was why he’d picked a damn stupid name like Theurgist…

So… Oh, God.

No, he thought, correcting himself as a smile spread across his face, a malevolent, smug grin. Not oh, God.

Oh, good…

***

Pierre grunted as he felt the bricks give behind him, and then swore as the wall gave completely and he plunged backward, landing on his back as the Sentinel stepped forth before him.

Pierre – Knuckles – had been pushed through three walls so far, and while he was glad to be back on a street – and consequently further away from the next wall – he was really starting to hurt. He could feel the film of blood that coated his back from all the cuts he’d picked up and he was reasonably sure at least one rib had snapped. He normally bounced back quick, sure, but that didn’t mean none of this hurt. And this was more damage than he was used to taking from one Sentinel.

Still, stopping to lick his wounds would get him killed. But getting back up and riding on back at the robot would give him a chance, at least. And anyway, he’d already torn loose a bit of it’s armour, so it wasn’t like the damage had been all one way.

***

Jackson returned, a wisp of white smoke emerging from the corner of his mouth. "Got ‘em, boss… Boss? Oh, man…"

He took in the scene around him with wide eyes and increasing worry.

"Right," he said, picking Erica’s prone form up and getting her into the fireman’s carry. "Don’t panic, boss, I’ll be back for you in a minute… And I’ll get you somewhere safe."

With that, the mutant was gone, loping across the cracked tarmac to the Clan’s safehouse.

***

Plastique grinned, as he always did, and kept moving. But now, instead of simply dodging until his teammates were clear, he moved with a purpose, backing always toward the next opening, the next shattered window… and trying to do it before the Springboard-Sentinel reached him. He knew if that happened, he had no chance. Or no chance of getting away with it, anyway…

A movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention briefly. Jackson had returned, and was now lifting their unconscious leader, turning to carry him away to safety.

But now, he realised… now it was time to put his plan into action. He swung into his chosen position, shattered window at his back, and leaped up into the air. Planting both feet on the Sentinel that had been trying to touch him since the attack began, he kicked backward, giving himself the thrust necessary to push himself through the open window and into comparative safety; landing, he curled into a foetal ball.

He’d felt a tingle, as his feet pushed against the Sentinel’s surface-

BOOOOOM!

He lifted his head from the floor, and a grin spread over his face. He’d been right; these Sentinels were power-duplicators somehow. And like most power thieves, they needed contact to do it. So, that meant the Sentinel with Springboard’s speed and agility should be out of the question by now; caught in the Plastique blast set off by the Sentinel he’d just touched.

All he had to do now, he thought as he stood once more, was to figure out how he could beat a robot with his abilities and the better physical capacities most robots had-

But no.

No, he didn’t.

Lying on the street, smoking slightly, was one partially-reformed Sentinel arm. It wasn’t part of the Springboard-Sentinel; Plastique knew what his blasts did to Sentinels, especially the human sized ones.

There was no way an arm would survive if the rest didn’t.

And the truth of the matter sank in to Alan Smith all at once. He started laughing; laughing so hard that he screwed his eyes shut in reflex.

The Plastique-Sentinel hadn’t been able to maintain consciousness while reforming in the way Alan did. It was based on electronics, not on (Alan was vague on this) whatever sort of psychic energy held people’s souls together. Without the electronics fully-formed to function, it’s consciousness didn’t last long enough to reform.

He laughed, and laughed; and as his eyes reopened, a blast of Jackson-style white light smashed into his gut, knocking him backwards and leaving him dazed.

***

NEXT ISSUE: The Shifters and the Clan continue to battle. Find out who wins…